As members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are leveraging on home-grown solutions, innovations and strategic partnerships to push back the onslaught of the novel coronavirus, Lagos State, Nigeria’s economic capital, is taking advantage of its five years of investment in biobanking and biosecurity governance to fight the pandemic.
From 2015 to 2017, that is, after the Ebola outbreak, Lagos invested in level three biosafety laboratory and biobank for the state. In 2018, it trained key staff in biosecurity and biothreat reduction and completed the Lagos State biosecurity policy and roadmap. From 2016 to 2020, the over 20 million people-strong state upgraded and expanded isolation capacity at Lagos Mainland Hospital, the infectious diseases hospital. The biosecurity governance is coordinated through the Lagos State Incident Command System.
In Lagos State, the fight against the novel coronavirus rests on a tripod of public health, economy and security.
“To focus only on one leg of the fight is dangerous. We cannot address only the public health emergency and forget the lives and livelihoods of Lagosians. We also need to maintain civil society, law and order,” Akin Abayomi, Lagos State commissioner for health, said on Wednesday.
At the regional level, the 380 million people-strong ECOWAS comprising 16 countries is coordinating the regional effort against COVID-19 through the West Africa Health Organisation (WAHO).
This is the 11th week of dealing with the outbreak on West African soil. On the April 23, WAHO convened a meeting of ECOWAS heads of state to address the growing concerns around the pandemic. The heads of state resolved that each member state has to commit to publishing daily epidemiological data and ensuring the vulnerable in society are protected. They also agreed on keeping a humanitarian corridor open to facilitate the delivery of supplies and to strictly patronise local manufacturers for surgical masks, hand sanitisers and a host of other things that can be manufactured locally.
“Nigeria has about 2.8 percent deaths from the novel coronavirus and West Africa has 17.7 percent of death from COVID-19,” Stanley Okolo, director-general of WAHO, said during a webinar on Wednesday themed ‘Fighting COVID-19 in West Africa: Considering the social, economic, financial and human security impact’.
“When we talk about COVID-19, we must emphasise that people are recovering in large numbers too,” Okolo said.
The overriding concern for ECOWAS is how to ramp up testing. Lagos shares the same concern. From 32 tests per day in the first weeks of the outbreak, Lagos State now does up 400 tests per day and has begun negotiations with the private sector to attain 4,000 tests per day.
“The more you test, the more you find but not everybody can conduct the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) molecular test for the novel coronavirus. It requires a strict environment. We are talking to four laboratories in Lagos and plan to have each conduct 1,000 tests per day,” Abayomi said.
Some of the challenges encountered in fighting the COVID-19 in West Africa include inadequate capacity for contact tracing. Some countries use community tracing and phone call tracing. However, the ratio of health worker to contacts traced is insufficient.
“The World Health Organisation recommends 1:30 but most ECOWAS member states have 1:60 or 1:70,” Okolo said.
Other challenges are operational logistics. Workers lack vehicles to move around and some remote areas requiring motorbikes in places such as Chad cannot be accessed because of the ban on the use of such vehicles to stem the activities of terrorists. Case management is also a challenge, and so is infrastructure.
